Sealed with a Hiss

Chapter 1

May 4, 2024

Saturday

Everything happens in the kitchen.

Harry swatted her fat gray cat off the windowsill behind the double kitchen sink. Pewter, the offending feline, was cussing the bluejay who was attacking the window with ferocious screeches. These two have hated each other for years. Harry couldn’t decide if this was Methusalah’s bluejay or progeny from the original pair who had nested high in the large walnut tree.

“Will you stop this racket?”

“It’s not me. I didn’t start it,” Pewter defended herself, not that Harry understood what was coming out of the fanged mouth.

However, Harry did grasp Pewter’s emotions.

Flopped on the kitchen floor, sprawled on the beautiful uneven pine, Mrs. Murphy, the tiger cat, lifted her head then dropped it. No point to get involved.

Tee Tucker, the corgi, took this opportunity to smart off about Pewter. “She has no sense. She’ll never get that bluejay.”

“Shut up, fat butt. I will kill that bird. I only need the chance.” The gray cat spit.

“Ha.”

Before Harry could advise her dog to keep quiet, Pewter launched off the windowsill, touched the countertop once, then sailed onto the recumbent dog. Sounded like the end of the world.

“That’s enough.” Harry knew enough not to smack either one of them. Instead she grabbed for the duster hanging on the wall and tickled both with the feathers. It broke them apart.

Mrs. Murphy moved away the minute Pewter landed on Tucker.

“We should stick together,” the tiger cat advised the young Irish Wolfhound, Pirate.

Not quite two, still learning human ways, the huge fellow sat up just in case he needed to run out of the room. With the gray cat and the corgi, one was never certain if the fury would spread.

“Right.” Pirate loved Mrs. Murphy.

Harry shook the feathers over the combatants again. “I mean it. You two stop it. Right now.”

Tucker, now on her feet, glanced up at Harry’s face, realizing her two-legged friend meant it. She moved away from the cat.

“I knew you were afraid of me.” Pewter puffed up.

Tucker curled up her lip, growled.

“Tucker. Forget it.” Then Harry turned to the preening cat. “Don’t be so full of yourself.”

“Susan.” Tucker shot away, blasted through the animal door in the kitchen door, to the outside porch.

“Gave her an excuse to run.” Pewter licked her paw, rubbing it on her dark gray face.

“I wouldn’t tangle with you,” Pirate honestly said, which puffed up Pewter even more.

The kitchen door opened, Susan stepping through it, Tucker right behind her.

“Is this rain ever going to stop? You know, there are flood warnings again.”

Harry walked over to the stove, flicked on the flame under the teapot. “Sit down. Or you can pull the corn bread out of the fridge, plus butter.”

“Your corn bread is the best.”

“Coming from you, that’s praise, but I think Aunt Tally’s is the best.” Harry smiled at her oldest friend, from cradle days.

“She’s had a longer time to perfect it.” Susan laughed, as Aunt Tally was one hundred and three.

Now in their early forties, both women tried to ignore the passing years, but a little sag here, an errant ache there sounded the warning. “Time is flying.”

Corn bread, plates, butter, and two cups of fabulous Assam tea graced the table as the two sat down.

“These animals are driving me crazy. One fight after another. Mostly Pewter and Tucker, but still, rainy days get on everyone’s nerves. Not so much on mine.”

“Given how much you overseeded last fall, I would think not.” Susan smiled. “Ned and I thought about overseeding the front lawn. Decided to wait to see if prices fell in the spring. You know the argument about seeding in spring versus seeding in late fall. I remember when you bought all that orchard grass seed.”

“Me too.” Harry took a long sip of her tea, the temperature perfect. “The news keeps saying inflation is falling. Well, honeybunch, I don’t see it. Went to Harris Teeter yesterday. Three bags of groceries, $198. The only expensive item in there were two T-bone steaks. Yes, gas has slipped down a bit, but I sure don’t see it for food. Thank God it’s warming up. I don’t see my electric prices falling either.”

“No.”

“Sorry, here I am bitching and moaning. You know I’m glad to see you. I’m always glad to see you.”

Susan grinned. “Same here. I’ve brought my notes for the school celebration. The weekend after Memorial Day will be here before we know it.” She reached into her back jean pocket, retrieving a small notebook.

“You were never born with a notebook in your hand. In History class I’d be furiously scribbling and you’d jot down a word or a date. God, I used to think Mr. Spencer would never shut up.”

Susan nodded. “The world is full of Mr. Spencers.”

Remembering to fetch her notebook, Harry rose, walked into the library, plucked her large notebook off a desk, returned, sat down with two pens she’d also taken from the desk. She rolled one over to Susan. “Fire away.”

Susan tapped the pen on the table. “Coach Evenfall gives the closing speech after Evie Rogers, valedictorian, of the class of 1959.”

The term colored school was used throughout Virginia. Walter Ashby Plecker, a physician, became the registrar of the Bureau of Vital Statistics. He believed in racial categories and pushed through the Racial Integrity Act in 1924. People of the Virginia tribes were lumped in the same category as Black people, under the term “colored” people, a label that was harmful to all of them.

Public schools had been segregated in Virginia since 1870 but now the screening was more stringent.

This act prevented numerous tribes from Federal recognition until 1984. A few remain unrecognized.

Harry, Susan, Ned, Fair, Tazio, and lately Lucas Harkness had worked to keep the physical schools in Crozet from destruction. Tazio, herself mixed race, started this eight years ago.

The dedication of the restored buildings was to be after Memorial Day. Those who had gone before would be honored.

Harry, spiral notebook fully opened, remarked, “Isn’t Tazio going to open everything? Then she introduces Moses Evenfall?”

“The mayor, then Tazio. We know Taz will stick to her time restriction. Will Coach and Mrs. Rogers and Norton Sessions?”

“We don’t know.” Harry twirled her pen. “Many of the guests will have gone to school with those two, but most of our guests from that time will only have been in the lower grades. There are fewer and fewer of those who graduated from high school in the fifties. We’ve received twenty replies, many out of state from the older students. You know who probably is familiar with some of the older people is Aunt Tally.” Harry cited the corn-bread queen.

“She might, but she’s white, obviously, so she went to a different school.”

“But people knew one another. Same community, so despite the divide of race, everybody knew everybody. That’s what my mother used to say when she’d admonish me to remember my manners.”

Susan sighed. “I guess. Are you saying Aunt Tally might have an idea about a speaker getting overly chatty?”

“I’m not very worried. Each keynote speaker has ten minutes. That’s actually a long time when you add it up.” Harry looked down at Pewter, fast asleep from her drama’s drain of energy.

“You forgot politicians.” Susan’s husband was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates from District 57.

“Fortunately, except for a few remarks from the mayor of Crozet, we have no politicians. Also the mayor is Jim Sanburne. He’s in his eighties now. His wife, Mim, will never tolerate a drawn-out speech.”

“That’s the truth.” Susan laughed as Big Mim Sanburne really ran Crozet. “I figure fifty-five minutes total. Someone always runs over.”

“You know what? I will talk to Aunt Tally.” Harry took a deep breath. “Her mind is so good. She said last time we spoke that she’ll be at the event.”

“It’s wonderful that she wants to be part of this.” Susan adored the old lady, as did most people. No one knew Crozet without her. “What about the Walter Plecker flyer? We proofread it but it’s not published yet. Not everyone knows the history of the schools of Virginia.”

“One thousand copies. I still think we could have gotten by with five hundred.”